What's a good SGI machine to start with?

[swarmik]

I would honestly pick an octane over o2/indigo2 anytime if noise is not an issue. A low end octane will blow away an indigo2 or o2, but man are Octanes big and heavy and noisy...

I have no experience with Octane, but I have three Octane2 and the noise is not that bad. It is worse than O2 (O2 can be quite silent when the noisy factory hard drive is replaced) but it much better than my Indigo2 (250MHz R4400, High Impact). Indigo2 is far more noisy - it exceeds the level of noise I can handle for more than 30 minutes without closed headphones. It's like being in a server room

[JacquesT]

Octane and Octane2 will have similar noise profiles, the Lucent PSUs are only marginally noisier than the Cherokee ones.

[gijoe77]

I was thinking more in the lines there are two types of Octanes - fanmode=fast and fanmode=not fast

fanmode=fast is freaking loud for both Octane1 and Octane2

fanmode=fast gets enabled when all or most XIO slots are filled, so my Octane1 has MXE, PVO and a PCI shoehorn with U160 card. It's LOUD. My Octane2 has V12, DM3 and also PCI shoehorn with U160 card.

[JacquesT]

Ah, OK!

Fastfan will activate if you fill the lower slot (slot '4' I believe) and also if you have a cardcage, from recollection

Other than that you can replace the fans for quieter ones, I have, it's bliss and still runs cool.

[Trippynet]

Indigo2 can be noisy, but it is possible to fan-mod it to be a lot quieter. Of course, I would recommend this less if you have IMPACT with TRAM modules, or if you're in a warm location. Living in the north of Scotland and only having a SolidIMPACT in my Indigo2 means that with a mod, it's now reasonably quiet and easily quiet enough for it to be bearable.

[swarmik]

That explains everything. My Octane2 is just a basic machine with a single 400MHz CPU, 2GB RAM and V6 graphics - no additional cards or the PCI cage.

[commodorejohn]

I was gonna say, yeah, my Indigo2 is...not quiet, but really not that loud. But it could just be that it doesn't have any need to really crank the fans up.

[Trippynet]

Mine neither really, but even with just the stock PSU fan (other fan still modded) it does generate quite a racket. Maybe it is because I have the top-end 48W IMPACT PSU? I found that out recently after the main PSU started playing up and I swapped in another none-modded and slightly less flaky one. Given that I like to listen to music whilst using my systems, the loud fan drone over the music was annoying!

But as technology has moved on, quieter fans that still shift a decent airflow do exist, but of course maintaining a decent airflow even with modern fans will still mean much more noise than you get from a modern PC.

[vishnu]

The loudest fans I have ever heard, by FAR, were the stock Intel Xeon fans in my 2 CPU by 2 cores each Tyan s2668, but using lm_sensors to PWM them down based on CPU temperature they were thereafter only loud on bootup. Even under massive CPU loads they never got hot enough to require the fans to run at full speed...

[commodorejohn]

My Blade 2000 does the same thing - full-bore industrial cooling-fan noise at boot, then as soon as it gets the OS proper loaded everything drops down to a noticeable but manageable hum.